By country · Asia-Pacific
Tamil films have a second life abroad — in the packed cinemas of Malaysia and Singapore, and, improbably, in Japan, where Rajinikanth's Muthu ran for 23 weeks and held a box-office record for 24 years.
The word 'girmit' itself comes from Fiji's cane fields. The Indians the British shipped there built the colony's economy — and have spent a century since being pushed to its margins.
Part 1 of Mother Tongues. When labourers from a dozen Indian districts were thrown together on Fijian plantations, their languages fused into something new — a tongue that is now the mother language of a people.
Part 1 of Children of the Girmit. Nearly 700,000 indentured Indians passed through a single stone depot in Port Louis — and their descendants became the majority, and the rulers, of an Indian Ocean nation.
External Affairs Minister Jaishankar signed an archival cooperation agreement with Trinidad and Tobago to help members of the Indo-Caribbean diaspora trace their ancestral roots. The Government of India is creating a comprehensive global Girmitiya database.
The Government of India has extended Overseas Citizen of India eligibility to the sixth generation of Indian-origin diaspora in Trinidad and Tobago — recognising the descendants of indentured Girmitiya labourers who arrived in 1845. A historic outreach with implications for other long-tail diaspora communities.
